Lindsay LeTellier

Ms. Chawkat

IR II G/T Period 2

3 March 2017

Data Collection

Questionnaire and Results:

Question #1: Gender

15 males

35 females

Question #2: Age

14 years old: 1 respondent

15 years old: 26 respondents

16 years old: 17 respondents

17 years old: 4 respondents

18 years old: 2 respondents

Question #3: Logic-based anti-smoking print ad vs. Emotion-based anti-smoking print ad

31 respondents (62%) chose logic-based ad

19 respondents (38%) chose emotion based ad

Question #4: Emotion-based mental health stigma video ad vs. Logic-based mental health stigma

video ad

42 respondents (84%) chose emotion-based ad

8 respondents (16%) chose logic-based ad

Question #5: Emotion-based texting and driving video ad vs. Logic-based texting and driving

video ad

39 respondents (78%) chose emotion-based ad

11 respondents (22%) chose logic-based ad

Question #6: Emotion-based mental health awareness print ad vs. Logic-based mental health

awareness print ad

26 respondents (52%) chose emotion-based ad

24 respondents (48%) chose logic-based ad

Question #7: Which are typically more persuasive to you: logic-based advertisements or

emotion-based advertisements?

4 respondents (8%) chose logic-based advertisements

46 respondents (92%) chose emotion-based advertisements

Question #8: Do you find logic-based advertisements, emotion-based advertisements, or

advertisements that use a combination of both logic (compelling statistics and facts) and emotion

(emotional stories of people) to be most persuasive to you?

3 respondents (6%) chose logic-based advertisements

7 respondents (14%) chose emotion-based advertisements

40 respondents (80%) chose advertisements that use a combination of logic and emotion

Analysis:

The researcher chose to collect the data for this particular topic using a survey in order to

gain simple, straightforward input from a large number of teenage respondents (~50). The
researchers ultimate goal for this project is to design a social marketing campaign pertaining to

mental health awareness targeted at the a high school student body, so it was important for that

the input received came from a certain high school student community so that she could base her

designs for her campaign off of their opinions regarding the strength of logic-based vs.

emotion-based advertisements.

35 females and 15 were males responded to the survey, and of this group, 1 is a

14-year-old, 26 are 15-year-olds, 17 are 16-year-olds, 4 are 17-year-olds, and 2 are 18-year-olds.

In response to the first comparison of two advertisements, the comparison of a logic-based print

ad versus an emotion-based print ad, most of the respondents stated that they found the

logic-based advertisement to be more persuasive to them, with 84% of the respondents choosing

the logic-based ad. Later on in the survey in Question #6, respondents were again asked to state

whether an emotion-based print ad or a logic-based print ad was more persuasive to them. In this

particular question, the advertisements pertained to mental health awareness. Responses to this

question were much more evenly split, with 52% of respondents selecting the emotion-based ad

and 48% of respondents selecting the logic-based advertisement.

Respondents were also asked in two questions to state whether they thought an

emotion-based or logic-based video advertisement was more persuasive to them. In Question #4,

two video advertisements (the first emotion-based, the second logic-based) pertaining to mental

health stigma were presented. 84% of respondents found the emotion-based video advertisement

to be more persuasive to them. In Question #5, respondents were again asked to assess the

persuasiveness of a pair of video-advertisement. These two-advertisements pertained to teenage

texting and driving. Again, a larger percentage of respondents decided that the emotion-based
video advertisement was more persuasive to them, with 78% of respondents choosing this

advertisement over the other one presented.

The final two questions of the advertisements were more general, and they asked

respondents to first decide if they typically find logic-based advertisements or emotion-based

advertisements to be more persuasive (Question #7) and then asked respondents if they found

emotion-based advertisements, logic-based advertisements, or advertisements that utilize a

combination of logic and emotion (Question #8). To Question #7, the majority of respondents

stated that they typically find emotion-based advertisements to be more persuasive to them with

92% of respondents selecting this option. However, when the respondents were asked whether

they thought emotion-based, logic-based, or combination-based advertisements were typically

most persuasive to them, only 14% of respondents stated that emotion-based ads were most

persuasive to them. Most respondents (80%) decided that advertisements employing both logical

and emotional appeals are more persuasive.

The results, for the most part, lined up with what the researcher had predicted. One

surprise within the results, however, was the lack of a correlation between gender and type of

advertisement chosen. The researcher had predicted that males would be more likely to

logic-based advertisements and females were more likely to choose emotion-based

advertisements. While this was the case with a few respondents, it was not a widespread trend

within the results.

These survey results ascertain the researchers hypothesis that while most teenagers

would state that advertisements that use a combination of logical and emotional appeals are most

effective to them, teenagers would state that emotion-based advertisements tend to be more
persuasive than logic-based advertisements. The researcher can also conclude, based on the

results, that it might be more effective to utilize primarily logic-based print advertisements and

primarily emotion-based video advertisements when targeting a teenage audience. These results

could not only help the researcher to create an effective mental health awareness social

marketing campaign at the high school surveyed, but they could also be of help to professional

social marketers who strive to target teenage audiences.

While these survey results provided a vast amount of quality and interesting data for the

researcher to analyze and to use to support her thesis in a research paper, the researcher may

choose to further her research by perhaps conducting a few interviews with high school students

to gain insight behind the reasoning as to why teenagers tend to prefer emotion-based

advertisements over logic-based advertisements. Conducting these brief interviews may help the

researcher to craft a deeper and more comprehensive research paper.